Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to encourage local authorities to implement weekly food waste collections in the immediate future ahead of New Burdens funding to support that collection which will be made available in 2023.

The Environment Bill will require local authorities to arrange for the separate collection of food waste from households in England, at least once a week. Businesses and organisations will also be required to arrange for the separate collection of food waste. Ahead of implementation of this and other reforms to increase the consistency of recycling collected from households and businesses, we continue to work with local authorities, businesses, WRAP and other stakeholders to ensure the successful roll-out of separate food waste collections.

The Government will ensure that local authorities are resourced to meet net costs arising from new statutory duties. This will include the additional costs associated with the requirement to separately collect food waste, including upfront transition costs and ongoing operational costs. We are carrying out a new burdens assessment for this policy and will provide further detail on new burdens funding in due course, following the outcome of the second consultation on recycling consistency, which we are preparing to launch in the spring. In this consultation, we expect to seek further views on implementing separate food waste collections, including transition timelines for local authorities and businesses, as well as statutory guidance for waste collectors.